BC

Ancient tree topples

Vancouver Island is recovering from some nasty weather after strong wind gusts brought down a more than 200-year-old oak tree at Central Middle School.

The massive tree fell across an empty parking lot that is usually filled with cars overnight Wednesday, as winds gusting up to 90 kilometres per hour swept across much of the Island.

There were already plans to remove the tree because it had started to rot.

"We understand it's over 200 years old, so this morning on our announcements we were telling our students that it's older than Canada, and the only people that knew it before that were our Aboriginal friends who had been living here all that time" said principal Christopher Macintosh.

Crews were at Central Middle School to cut up the tree Thursday morning.

The Greater Victoria School District said it will make the wood available to schools for nature-themed play spaces.